I know it's not the greatest picture, but it has a several very thin legs coming out from the body. It reminds me a little of a spider. It's very light colored, kind of a straw colored- beige. This is big from what I understand most mites look like.
This is about the 6th time I've found one of these bugs on my hands/arms after feeding. The first time I ever saw one on me was a few months back when I picked up new feed bags at the bulk order drop off.
Could this bug be in the feed? I can't find a pic of grain mites to compare.
I think we have a mite type problem but I don't see real evidence on the chickens. I keep checking around their vents and under the wings. Most of them shake their heads a lot though.
This summer I've lost two of my small chickens (one at 13 weeks and another at almost 14.5 of age) from seemingly heat stroke. But I keep wondering if mites are weakening the smaller/low pecking order birds so that they were more susceptible. It's been over 3 weeks since the last one died.
I've put out extra water dishes and electrolytes in the shady areas they frequent during the day as they free range from morning to night. Their coop is in the shade.
Gave them new bedding with DE and Garden & Poultry dust, dusted the chickens twice with wood ash/DE and then with poultry dust. I've sprayed their coop with neem oil. I wondered if they had ear mites so I put coconut oil in their ears once. But they are still shaking their heads. It's going on 3 weeks now.
We were going to send some to freezer camp so I held off on dusting again with the poultry dust until that was done. It took me 3 hours to dust 19 chickens. The flock is down to 13 so it should be more a little more manageable to start dusting them again.
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